Island Studies Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2007, pp. 141-158
BOOK REVIEWS SECTION
Refereed Papers from the 2nd International Small Island Cultures Conference, Museum Theatre, Norfolk Island Museum, Norfolk Island, 9-13 February 2006. Editor: Henry Johnson. Published by SICRI (The Small Island Cultures Research Initiative) – www.sicri.org/.
The emphasis in this text is on expressive aspects of culture: six papers on music and performing arts; three on literature and linguistics; two each on media, ethnography/anthropology, circulation of knowledge and practice; and one each on tourism and photography. Each highlights criteria by which their origin or evolution on an island influenced their shape or function.
To begin with music, Jennifer Cattermole examines how Fijians of Taveuni island incorporate elements of internationally popular songs, instruments and tunings into their own songs and music to express their own identity.
Chatham Island, lies cold, isolated and sparsely populated far to the east of New Zealand mainland: hardly the context for much creativity. So it is not surprising that there are few locally generated songs. Intermarriage between indigenous people and European settlers and incorporation into predominantly European New Zealand society led to church music playing a significant role during the last century, and popular dance music with guitars, saxophone, and other instruments; but television and CDs are more important for the younger generation.
Henry Johnson examines the adaptation of Okinawan performing arts to the expectations of tourists, a major source of income there as in many island cultures, accompanied by familiar debates as to what is “authentic”, “sacred”, “unique” … and the unstated issue of what pays. He focuses on the Eisa dance and musical accompaniment during the Bon festival when ancestors’ souls return: but tourists come throughout the year so Eisa is performed in theme parks continuously.
The amazing complexity of music and dance in the tiny but heterogeneous population of the Furneaux Islands off Tasmania, Australia, is explored by Robin Ryan. Small groups of Aborigines and Europeans lived together to preserve mutton-birds in the 1800s and about one third of people now identify as Aboriginal. Elements of their traditionally-inflected dance and music persist through the haze of influences from European sailors, missionaries and immigrants from all over the globe, injecting their own instruments and patterns of expression.
The Seychelles Cultural Group in Perth is the topic of Rachel Shave’s study of how they promote Seychellois culture and awareness of its contribution to Australia, creating their own space and identity while integrating into Australian society. Seychellois, descendants of French, African, Indian, Chinese and other immigrants (there was no indigenous population), have drawn on all those sources to create a unique genetic, cultural and musical heritage. Book Reviews Section
Susie Khamis of Christmas Island also migrated to Australia. She set up restaurants featuring dishes from her homeland with its Arab/Muslim-derived traditions.
Philip Hayward looks at adaptation of introduced music and at locally originated music on Norfolk Island. He did not find any old songs from the sailors of the “Bounty” mutiny, but did find that “Pitcairn hymns” carried the stamp of Norfolk identity. From the 1980s local composers have created songs in the Norfolk dialect of English, and CDs have facilitated their dispersal.
While on the subject of Norfolk, Peter Mulhhausler’s chapter examines the origins of unique items of local vocabulary and the way they evolve in small island contexts: in this case, from Tahitian and various English dialects of the mutineers, and from environmental and historical contexts.
Rebecca Coyle’s chapter on Radio Norfolk as it evolved from the 1920s, illustrates the common task of islands radio - promoting the local while also being a channel for the foreign. As elsewhere it is challenged by television, podcasts, online radio services and other media, but still finds a valued niche.
Turning to literature, Peter Goodall analyses a fictional autobiography on radical changes in Guernsey (Channel Islands) life from 1890 to the 1960s, which remains torn between its French and British heritage. From a culture where it was “hard to imagine the sheer amount of religion”, the autobiographer felt Guernsey had “sold out” and become a “whore of a place” due to distant markets, tourists and financiers.
The Isles of Scilly are the focus for Marea Mitchell’s analysis of Robert Maybee’s ballad on the wreck of the HMS Association in October 1707, exemplifying the prominence of environmental hazards on small islands and the radically different interpretations of the same events by islanders and mainlanders.
Two aspects of culture change in the Cook Islands are featured. Charlotte Chambers examines the influence of commerce and “scientific” knowledge on traditional resource prohibitions that protect clam stocks. Wendy Cowling studies how traditional material culture was abandoned or adapted to the extent that it appeared less effective than introduced substitutes.
Tourism’s impact on island cultures is mentioned in many chapters but is focal to Stephen Royle’s on the Falklands where British settlers evolved their own culture over eight generations of residence. The small town and the highly dispersed, self-sufficient, rural ranching people exhibit two “dialects” of that culture, with eco-tourism “eroding” both.
Environment is a feature of many chapters, but Kumi Kato goes deepest into that theme in her study of the intricacies of the symbiotic relationship of the women who dive for abalone in Okinawa with their environment.
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Eleanor Rimoldi’s is the only comparative study: of tiny, highly urbanized Waiheke Island in Auckland harbour, and comparatively huge and rural Bougainville, which has autonomy within Papua New Guinea (PNG). Both see themselves as “treasure islands” vis-a-vis larger neighbours of which they are a part (Auckland and PNG), and emphasize their differences and internal unifiers to create an identity culture.
Tony Whincup, a master of the art of photography, focuses on its role in social research. He uses images of the Kiribati canoe to show a “symbolic system through which the interplay of experience, social structure and sources of expression is mediated and made manifest” (p.151) to record shifts in gender roles, skills, values, economy and spirituality.
While the emphasis is naturally on island cultures, there is little comparison with cultural enclaves in continental situations, and it is difficult to discern how far distinctions of island cultures are due to geographic as against social isolation.
Of the 17 authors writing on small island cultures, none lives in a small island culture, and only one originated from such a culture. It is to be hoped that SICRI can work to increase participation by people of small island cultures.
The islands studied are mostly in the Pacific (10 – or 12 if we include two on Okinawa, the only two from Asia). The 3 from the Atlantic are British (Channel Islands, Scilly and Falklands). The two from the Indian Ocean were former British territories. The Pacific emphasis is to be expected since this conference was held on Norfolk Island, but is hoped that extra efforts can be made to ensure more balanced participation in future.
Nevertheless, it is an excellent collection and contribution to the understanding of island cultures.
Ron Crocombe Cook Islands & Professor Emeritus, University of the South Pacific [email protected] ______
Îles Funestes, Îles Bienheureuses. Gaële de La Brosse, Ed. In French. Paris, Transboréal, 2004 (Chemins d’étoiles, nº 12, August), 270 pp, ISBN-10: 2-913955-27-4, 20 €.
The editors of the magazine Chemins d’étoiles [Star Routes] turned their August 2004 number into a monographic study of island themes, and they executed their plan very well: the volume surprises the reader with its high production quality, pleasing design, and profuse illustrations. The book’s almost three hundred pages take us on an expertly guided journey of discovery of curiosities and information about islands without limit in time or space. Any aspect related to islands is valid; and thus, in reading the volume, we come to learn data and histories which were unsuspected, and which otherwise we might well never have known.
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The monograph is structured in sections which contain articles united by a common theme, under a brief, defining epigraph. The diversity of subjects is as wide as that of the professions of the contributors, who are travellers, journalists, anthropologists, photographers, naturalists, geographers or historians… in every discipline, the contributors find a subject of study, theme or inspiration related to islands, real or imaginary, with which they have worked during their professional careers, and which they have explored at greater length in recently published books. The freshness and energy of the book spring from the intertwining of personal visions and unique, vital experiences; and this without leaving behind scholarly rigour, when necessary, or accurate accounts of the real environment of each one of those experiences in which we quickly find ourselves involved when we begin reading.
The book begins with a section of “Cheminements” [Developments] (pp. 8-45) which contains five articles: by a writer, a journalist, a marine biologist, an ethnologist, and a photographer. They speak of islands of great geographic diversity; they reflect on the importance of islandness as a provider of unique conditions of life, of landscape, of feelings, even of poetry. These five tireless travellers, wandering from island to island in search of one in particular, bring artistry and poetry to the presentation of their discoveries.
The book continues with the section titled “Repères” [References] (pp. 48-102); here the insular histories mix reality and fantasy in famous stories such as those of Robinson Crusoe, the whale-island, treasure islands, paradise islands of the Pacific, and insular wonders of nature discovered during 19th century journeys of exploration. In all of these stories the background of reality together with the islands’ remoteness have favoured the survival of different myths, so that the myths have not only survived, but flourished and fed the imaginations of subsequent generations of readers. Naturally, the contributors of this section are lovers of adventure stories, history, and the sciences.
The next section, “Dialogues” [Dialogues] (pp. 104-122) offers two interviews, one with a bookseller who is an enthusiast of Renaissance cartography and geography; and the other with a writer, a daughter of diplomats, on her tireless trip around the world and its islands. These are accompanied by another, briefer contribution: a photo album of Mediterranean insular landscapes by photographer Hervé Jézéquel. His project, to follow the journey of Ulysses according to Homer’s account, materializes in these pages where the suggestive island landscapes evoke the presence of Greek myths. The change here from reading to the appreciation of visual artistic expression makes a brief and well-planned rest in the reader’s journey through the book.
The following section is titled “L’Espace et le Temps” [Space and Time] (pp. 148-203), and the articles it contains are particularly diverse. The first is geographical-historic and discusses the representation of the island of the Garden of Eden in medieval maps; the second addresses ghost-island in largely unexplored environments such as the polar seas; the third is an anthropological study of the relations between the natives of the remote archipelago of Melanesia and foreigners, particularly the former’s efforts to comprehend and adapt new elements into their own culture; the fourth, also historic in nature, treats the theme of islands as prisons; and the fifth addresses the curious relationship between the
144 Book Reviews Section islands and the creation of “rustic kingdoms” by pirates, adventurers, or shipwrecked men who come to conquer their own territory and establish a realm as they see fit.
Towards the end of the book somewhat lighter themes are addressed. The next section, “Passeurs” [Messengers] (pp. 206-213), discusses various events and associations that are related with islandness; and the following section, “Parcours Choisis” [Selected Journeys] (pp. 216-229), proposes some destinations for a unique trip to islands all over the world. The last section, “Lire, Voir, Écouter” [Read, See, Listen] (pp. 232-267), discusses occasions where the island plays a central role in a given work of art: adventure novels set on islands, the gigantic torsos of Rapa Nui, Gauguin and Matisse in Polynesia, and the island of Ouessant as a setting for films. A general bibliography and a poem conclude the book.
The editors made an excellent choice in seeking the participation of diverse contributors who however share a common passion for islands. The book is addressed to a wide public, not necessarily specialized; the reader’s tour through its pages is like a trip from island to island, a new Odyssey, where each stop reveals curious and mysterious information which we will never fully know. The book is an essential and delightful reading for all those who are interested in islands.
Mercedes Delgado Pérez Universidad de Sevilla Spain [email protected] ______
Jonathan Pugh & Janet Henshall Momsen (eds.) Environmental Planning in the Caribbean, Aldershot, Ashgate (Part of Ashgate’s Urban Planning and Environment Series), 2006, 220pp, ISBN-13: 978-0754643913, US$99.95.
This slim, 200-page volume packs a lot of information (ten articles) and more ambition: “there is a need to examine how environmental planning discourses are produced through cultural, social, geographical, political, economic and historical factors … the need for a more context-specific approach to how environmental planning can be improved in the future.” [Preface, xii]. Jonathan Pugh is the IPP/GURU Academic Fellow in Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning at Newcastle University upon Tyne, where he also manages the web site Participatory Planning in the Caribbean (funded by ESRC and DFID) at
The underlying premise is that this book will be used as text readings for university courses in Caribbean planning, environmental planning or tourism studies. As such, it has a more academic voice and focus on intellectual themes (such as perspectives on “post colonial studies”) than is ordinarily encountered by planners working in small islands of the Caribbean, and it does not specifically undertake to address small island issues.
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From the standpoint of planning practice in small islands, the subjects treated by the twelve authors provide an overview of the range of issues likely to be confronted across the wider Caribbean. It should be noted, however, that three of the twelve case studies deal with coastal planning in Belize and Costa Rica, continental states with different conditions than the small islands of the region. On the other hand, the urban preservation financing issues discussed in the Cuban chapter by Joseph Scarpaci are similar to those faced by many of the colonial port towns in the small islands of the region, even though Cuba, as a large island, has many more layers of regional and national bureaucracy.
Two issues pertinent to small islands that are under-developed in this volume are: (1) “scale” issues faced by small islands and related differences in planning capacity based on size; and (2) the role of multi-lateral environmental agreements and their implementing agencies in environmental planning at national and regional (Caribbean) levels.
The difference in size among islands creates great disparities in the resources available for any sort of planning activity. As islands get smaller, their environmental problems do not necessarily get less complex: in fact, the proportion of the total landscape that is involved in the complexity of conflicted coastal conditions increases substantially for very small islands. While planning problems and conflicts remain high for rapidly changing and highly stressed small islands, the resources available to address these problems decrease, to the degree that many key planning functions are staffed by no more than one or two skilled staff. Even when staff positions are budgeted for high priority environmental posts, it is often necessary to secure qualified personnel from overseas, and it takes many months or years to orient them to the special conditions and issues faced by small islands.
One of the remarkable planning achievements recounted in this book is the quality of planning developed in the microstate of Montserrat, which has a population of less than 10,000 people, many of whom were evacuated after the volcanic eruptions which began in 1995. An explanation of how the local three-person planning office is able to achieve the quantity and quality of planning that has been produced in recent decades (These are well described in the article by Jonathan Skinner.) would be of great interest to small island planners and researchers. Similar analyses could be conducted for the small Department of Disaster Management in the British Virgin Islands, and other agencies in Caribbean small island states and overseas territories.
Another topic of relevance to environmental planning in small islands of the Caribbean is the large role played over the past ten or 15 years by multilateral environmental agreements and their implementing agencies (UNEP, UNDP, the World Bank, and the various Secretariats). This has been especially true since the World Environment Summit (Rio 1992) and the subsequent Programme of Action for Small Island Developing States (Barbados 1994). The articles in Environmental Planning in the Caribbean support the concept of “postcolonial influences” on conservation and planning throughout the Caribbean, but these are not generally linked to the international banks and organizations that now have important, even dominant roles in some areas of environmental planning.
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The role of international organizations includes setting performance standards for national requirements to produce plans and periodic national reports, and occasionally even intervening to produce such reports. For example in the 1990’s the World Bank contracted a team of outside consultants to travel through the Caribbean to produce the National Environmental Action Plans (NEAPs) for the countries of the Caribbean that are, or hope to be, Bank borrowers. National governments were told they were not required to sign the Bank-produced documents, but that a NEAP needed to be concluded in a short time in order to qualify for future assistance.
Since these same international organizations also revise, approve and supervise grants for biodiversity conservation, climate change, international waters, and desertification, they also have major effect on the permissible new investments that can be made by national governments in environmental planning at the national, sub-regional and Caribbean-wide level. For example, in 1995 the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Sub- Commission for the Caribbean (IOCARIBE) meeting in Barbados voted to apply for a Global Environment Facility “International Waters” grant to improve management of the resources of the Caribbean Sea. That project has been under more-or-less continuous development by competent institutions in the region, but it is still only in the latter planning stages, twelve years later. At a time when governance of the region’s marine resources is becoming critical in the face of catastrophic resource decline, the region still faces delays in the institution of one of the few programs that could address the problem.
At its price, this book is no financial bargain (US$0.50c a page), and may be beyond the purchasing power of planners and planning offices in the small islands of the Caribbean. There are, however, many good approaches to important small island environmental planning issues discussed in several chapters. Potential users might want to consider accessing the scanned copy of Environmental Planning in the Caribbean on the AmazonOnlineReader web site
Bruce Potter Island Resources Foundation Tortola, British Virgin Islands & Washington DC, USA [email protected] ______
Glynn Barratt (2004) The Russians in Hobart 1823, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart. ISBN-10: 1862951268 (paperback). 174 pp + 4 pp illustrations.
Canadian Professor of Russian, Glynn Barratt, has rescued from historical oblivion, the singular event of two Russian warships visiting Hobart harbour. What was their real mission in arriving unannounced into the fledgling British island colony in 1823? If Barratt knows, he is not telling. The residents of Hobart Town took the purpose to be peaceful “discovery”; Britain and Russia had been allies in the recently concluded Napoleonic Wars.
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In May 1823, the tiny settlement of Hobart Town (now Hobart) in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) was a mere nineteen years old, with a population of less than 7,000. Nevertheless these visitors were armed with excellent Russian Admiralty maps of Zemlia Vandimena derived from the voyages of Matthew Flinders, Bruni D’Entrecasteaux and Louis de Freycinet.
In preparing the charts, Captain Kruzenshtern explained that “I give preference to names bestowed by the English, except with regard to names bestowed by Admiral D’Entrecasteaux... otherwise I hold to French toponymy only in cases when no earlier name had been given”.
Brothers Mikhail and Andrei Petrovich Lazarev skippered the two Russian warships - Kreiser and Lagoda - into the nascent Tasmanian colony. They were en route from Kronstadt in Tsarist Russia to Sitka in Russian Alaska, travelling via Terra del Fuego). They made a three week victualing and exploratory sojourn in Tasmania.
Captain Mikhail Lazarev had instructions to “provide descriptions of whatever works of art or nature, trade, and rare or interesting sights”; all Captain Lazarev’s subordinates had been instructed by the Russian Naval Ministry to keep a journal from the first day of the ... voyage to the last. Out of a crew of 250, “at least two dozen of the ships’ returning officers and midshipmen duly submitted their accounts of their adventures in Van Diemen’s Land ... to the imperial authorities”. Four accounts - the two commanding Lazarev brothers, the surgeon Petr Ogievskii and the teenager midshipman Dmitrii Zavalishin - are presented by Barratt.
Van Diemen’s Land “clad in beautiful green” impressed the visitors favourably. “The Derwent River and the adjoining D’Entrecasteaux Channel undoubtedly form one of the most spacious and beautiful harbours in the world”; Captain Mikhail Lazarev continued his praises “the climate of Hobart Town is very healthy... nowhere do I recall our crews having so improved in health and strength as during our three-week stay in Port Derwent - and that despite their working every day, and pretty hard at that”.
Captain-Lieutenant Andrei Lazarev wrote: “A pleasant variety of nature is everywhere visible in the environs... The soil is very fertile... Landowners do not trouble themselves with haymaking, because here domesticated stock can feed year round on fresh and sweet field grass... The lot of exiled prisoners here is such that they cannot be considered unfortunates, by any stretch of the imagination”.
Only Andrei Lazarev comments, other than in passing, on the indigenous population. “The number of natives in Van Diemen’s Land is entirely unknown, because they have no intercourse whatever with other peoples and avoid even the friendliest of relations ... few settlers have ... managed to see them from afar... The reason for such alienation ... is supposed to be a lack of foresight on the part of the founder of the colony, Captain Bowen ... their bodies are not extremely black but they cover their bodies with coal... their occupation is hunting wild beasts”. He writes that he is aware of the descriptions of the
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Tasmanians by James Cook. Andrei was keen to “take full advantage of the pure air”. He was aware of the historical primacy of this visit. “I did my best to collect information about a country so little known to Russians, and now being visited by them for the first time”. “The natural riches of the country itself, animal and mineral, had never been described by anyone with proper accuracy”.
Surgeon Petr Ogievskii’s report is titled “Natural Resources of Van Diemen’s Land”:
“I walked over the hilly surrounds of the town many times and always with new satisfaction ... kangaroos the size of sheep... feed on grasses and other plant forms, move in great herds, and cause harm to nobody”. He climbed Mount Wellington, tasted leaves and described timber varieties by weight and resin. “The woods abound with ... birds .... the shores abound in mussels and other shellfish, as well as sea stars ...with regard to fish, unfortunately, there is nothing much to be said, for often enough though we cast our seine net... we did not pull up a single fish … the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms are numerous”.
Dr. Ogievskii goes on to record how “… the mildness and beneficence of the local climate deserve our wonder. Not a tree is stripped bare by the winter’s cold, nor a blade of grass dried up by the torrid sun. And the happy effects of such a clime are also felt by the settlers who, though possibly sent out for a crime ... even praise the destiny that brought them to such a country ... where even the most seriously ailing finds relief and a complete cure”.
The fourth account Barratt presents is by the teenager midshipman Dmitrii Zavalishin. He reports trips “into regions of wilderness” and that Tasmania “turned upside down all our usual ideas about the products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There, everything proved to be entirely incongruous with what we had known before”; a pelt of the now extinct thylacine and many other zoological specimens were submitted to the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences. He reports the escape of five Russian seamen, one of whom was never recovered. Two years later, Zavalishin was involved with the unsuccessful Decembrist uprising, and was exiled to Siberia.
Glynn Barratt has unearthed from the archives the records the first Russians to witness Van Diemen’s Land. The Russian visitors speak for themselves, and Barratt makes generous use of footnotes for commentary. Disappointingly, the author presents no contemporaneous artwork from this voyage and the illustrations included are poorly reproduced. It is tantalizing to speculate that in some Russian archives there are yet-to-be- discovered sketchbooks or art folios of early colonial Tasmania. The author provides a useful introduction, an overview and a poorly conceived quadripartite index. This book is recommended for the reader who seeks a non-Anglo account of early colonial Tasmania.
John Paull The Fenner School of Environment and Society Australian National University, Canberra, Australia [email protected] ______
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Lammert De Jong & Dirk Kruijt (eds.) (2005) Extended Statehood in the Caribbean: Paradoxes of Quasi Colonialism, Local Autonomy and Extended Statehood in the USA, French, Dutch and British Caribbean, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Rozenberg Publishers, paperback, ISBN-13: 978-9051706864, 206pp.
How to make sense of the unraveling of the Netherlands Antilles, an experiment in associated statehood that is now at the point of transition, after all but one of its five constituent members have voted in referenda to abrogate the status quo? This is perhaps the pragmatic rationale behind Extended Statehood, a book of essays that brings together four reviews of the evolution and current relationship between the four metropolitan powers in the Caribbean and their respective associated sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJs). These reviews are framed by two reflexive essays by the compilation’s senior editor, and accompanied by a ‘thick interview” with a well-travelled disc jockey from the SNIJ of Sint Maarten/Saint Martin. DJ Shadow is a “pragmatic anti-national” (p. 158) whose insights on the book’s subject matter are carefree and populist, contrary to the macro-driven accounts of scholars or ex-policy officials that grace the rest of this book.
The publication of this volume is one of a few, but increasingly more common in recent scholarship, that embrace “constitutional in-betweenity” (p. 5) as a given, rather than a policy fluke, in the current configuration of metropolitan-SNIJ relationships, in the Caribbean as elsewhere around the globe. While still a work in progress – as are all federal systems - what is certain in this narrative are two observations. First, that SNIJs are not meant to be evolving towards the achievement of political independence and full sovereignty. This aspiration may have held true in previous decades; but the political, material and civic aspirations of islanders, as well as the economic flows that sustain these polities, render such notions as fanciful, destabilizing and even odious. Second, and following from the first observation, is that continuing to investigate these island polities in terms of colonialist discourse is unproductive, because it disregards the permanency (certainly in the medium term) of a link with a metropolitan power that is desirable by the islanders. It is not the nature of the link itself that is the meritorious subject of debate, but its manifestation: to the extent that even independistas in the Caribbean do not wish to rupture the umbilical cord that links them to France, the Netherlands, UK, USA or the European Union. It is the consideration of these autonomies as members of federal arrangements that is struck as the tone of this text in its scene-setting, opening essay.
The book reviews the evolution of relations between metropole and island autonomy, originally conceived as a process of decolonization, but now seen in retrospect (with the possible exception of the French case) as a process of (still ongoing) ad hocism: a sequence of policy moves, feints, posturing, countermoves and u-turns: within these, the metropolitan party manifests long stretches of benevolent neglect, and during the rest of the time tries to maintain influence, administer benign supervision, and facilitate economic development via “development cooperation”, at times even manifesting some frustration, even surprise, at the [changing] expectations of the small islanders. Meanwhile, the latter - pragmatists par excellence - have grown to appreciate the privilege of open access to the metropolitan country, along with extended citizenship rights, many having voted with their feet and joined the island diaspora there.
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Still, old habits die hard: in effect, it is as if the contributors to this book have largely not heeded the arguments of their editor to ditch the redundant colonial paradigm. Jorge Duany and Emilio Pantojas-García review the “contradictions” of associated statehood for the largest SNIJ of all, Puerto Rico, but continue to refer to “the completion of the island’s decolonization” (p. 21); Justin Daniel refers to the “unfinished character” of the departmentalization of Martinique and Guadeloupe within the French state (p. 59). Peter Clegg is concerned that aid from the UK will risk “perpetuating Montserrat’s dependency” (p. 141). Francio Guadeloupe obfuscates matters when he refers to “alternative post- colonies of the Caribbean” (p. 157). Perhaps it is to federalism and regional economic development theory that one should turn to find the right language to address these cases.
In these accounts, much is made of the alleged lack of capacity of these islands to manage their own development, their proneness to being swamped by hurricanes or else taken over by drug trafficking, money laundering or other forms of “international lawlessness” (p. 87); the fragile basis of their finances; and the ‘crowding out’ effect of exogenous aid; whereas de Jong reminds us that SNIJs overall enjoy a better quality of life than their sovereign neighbours in the region, and that fiscal transfers are a fact of life. A description of the offshore finance industries developed successfully in various Caribbean SNIJs, which have also successfully removed themselves from the list of OECD harmful tax competition regimes, is relegated to two footnotes. There is only mention in passing of the significance of tourism to the development of the Caribbean region. The difficulties mentioned with respect to sub-national island jurisdictions would not necessarily be ones from which regions of the associated metropolitan power itself are exempt. Moreover, GNP per capita comparisons between mainland and island economies are suspect because so much of the economic activity in small island territories may be subsistence-driven or operating within the informal economy, and thus never appear in official statistics.
The paradox referred to in the book’s title takes on different hues in the various chapters. In Puerto Rico, it is a robust sense of cultural nationalism that is seen to fit badly within the island’s current political status. In the French départements, it is a search for identity that also encapsulates a commitment to the French unitary state as well as the European Union; in the Dutch Caribbean, it is how to benefit from integration into the Netherlands without succumbing to second-class citizenship; in the British overseas territories in the Caribbean, it is to respect democratic principles while executing appropriate and responsible oversight.
All in all, Extended Statehood is a useful book for scholars of federalism, regional development and island studies to pore over and keep on their shelves. The historical background of each case is well documented, while the discussion of current policy dilemmas is useful and instructive. Sadly, the book lacks an author and subject index.
Godfrey Baldacchino Island Studies Programme University of Prince Edward Island, Canada [email protected] ______
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Nira Wickramasinghe (2006) Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, A History of Contested Identities, Hurst & Co, London, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-1850657590, hardback, 360pp.
This book offers a vast amount of detailed information on the history of the people and communities of Sri Lanka and the evolution of their identities as opposed to a history of the process of state-building. This is not the first volume that has been published on this subject as the author herself acknowledges. The select bibliography includes several well known authors such as K. M. De Silva and James Manor. The author claims, however, that her study is an attempt to articulate an original perspective on Sri Lanka's history that draws on a critical understanding of and research into the country's colonial past and its post independence and contemporary politics and society. The book is roughly divided into an analysis of the impact of colonial rule on the Sri Lankan people and the impact of the creation of an independent Sri Lankan state in 1948. The chapters are subdivided into a range of interesting sections that deal with important social, economic and political processes all of which, although not suggesting a linear progression, do provide an insight into the different communities that constitute Sri Lanka's plural society, the creation of social hierarchies and the complexities of power relations.
The two main communities today are the Sinhalas (although there are caste divisions within Sinhalese society also) and the Tamils. However, the island is located in the Indian Ocean and since ancient times has attracted traders. The permanent settlement of some of these trading communities and commercial classes has contributed to ethnic diversity. The author makes a distinction between cultural and political identities and also illustrates interconnections between the two. In brief, different groups began to jockey for power with the advent of representative political institutions. For example, the commission on constitutional reform headed by Lord Donoughmore (1927-28) was confronted with ‘a self-conscious assertion of communal belonging’. There were even dress codes, so for instance Malays distinguished themselves from Moors by not wearing the red felt fez (a significant community symbol for the Moors) and instead tying a cloth around their heads. More importantly identities were being shaped by notions of an authentic past. The Sinhala nationalists drew on the Mahavamsa and the legendary prince Vijaya who is believed to have come from north India, and stressed their Aryan origins. Many Jaffna Tamils felt an affinity with South India and had an attachment to a cultural heritage that was very different from that of the Sinhalas. Religious revivalism (both Hindu and Buddhist) also shaped identities and challenged the social values of foreign Christian rulers and British rule as a whole. Today Buddhism is practised by seventy per cent of the population and the state is committed to giving Buddhism 'the foremost place'. Nevertheless, the theoretical point made by the author is that identities are not stable and unchangeable but fluid and constructed by a variety of processes. Chapter three on ‘National framings: Authentic bodies and things’ has an interesting section on ‘Spreading notions of authenticity: schools, reading, newspapers, theatre and new religious practices’.
The first chapter, entitled ‘Colonial Encounters’, informs us that for about four hundred years the island of Sri Lanka was the prey of successive naval powers, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British, that controlled parts of or the totality of its land and changed social and economic structures. A market society developed and was dominated by the needs and
152 Book Reviews Section demands of plantation capitalism. The cash crops grown were coffee, followed by tea, coconuts and rubber. The needs of the plantation economy led to inward migration of labourers of South Indian origin who became known as the estate Tamils and occupied the lowest rungs of society. However, the inward migration of labour was resented by the indigenous Sinhala people. Chapter four on 'Before independence: Communities and conflicts' has a section on 'The vote and anti-migrant moves' that examines the issue. In keeping with her argument about the fluidity of identities the book notes that earlier migrants from South India had been assimilated. Therefore, the Tamils are by no means a monolithic community, moreover the estate Tamils have been betrayed by the Sri Lankan Tamils who did not express solidarity with them. Chapter five on ‘Citizens, Communities, Rights, Constitutions, 1947-2000’ sheds light on why so many Tamils became stateless. Although the agreements between the governments of India and Sri Lanka to grant Indian/ Sri Lankan citizenship to these Tamils was an attempt to solve the problem there was not much sympathy for these Tamils within Sri Lanka.
However, while all non-Aryans were considered to be aliens by proponents of Sri Lankan nationalism the British introduced other criteria such as period of residence or proof of intention to settle. The Tamils, therefore, became the victims of a 'rational' and legal order that was implanted in colonial Ceylon. Another point made by the author is that today the most visible communities are the Sinhalas and the Tamils, many other communities exist but are almost invisible. The attempt to fix identities started with the colonial practice of taking censuses. An entire chapter is devoted to the discussion of how European rulers constructed identities by classifying people according to social categories such as caste, religion, race, nationality and so on. In chapter two, 'Colonialism and constructed identities' the author argues that 'when the British officials chose to delineate groups within the native population and refer to them as castes, nationalities, races or communal groups, the term used was never innocent or fortuitous; it reflected an understanding of the differences prevalent amongst the people of Ceylon'. The categories kept changing and in 1921 the principal races recognised by the census included the Low Country and Kandyan Sinhalese, the Ceylon and Indian Tamils, and the Ceylon and Indian Moors. Four other races were acknowledged, the Burghers and Eurasians and the Malays and Veddas. The Muslims of the island were also given recognition by the census. The divisions within the Muslim community were based mainly on origins. During British rule various associations were formed to represent all these communities, for example, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress and the Ceylon Indian Congress. The former claimed to represent all 1.5 million Tamils of the island while the latter championed the rights of the Indians.
The book devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of the left in Sri Lanka and the search for equality before moving on to an examination of the search for sovereignty: Tamil separatism and nationalism. Both chapters note divisions within these movements. The author asserts that the first progressive left organisations originated in the needs of the urban and plantation working classes for representation. The first half of the chapter gives a history of the left movement while the second half focuses on the politics of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) whose aim is to secure social justice for the Sinhalese by taking up arms against an oppressive state that has fostered a neocolonial economy ‘completely subservient to the imperialists’. The chapter on Tamil separatism - while acknowledging
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that the Tamil community ‘is not one but many’ - accepts that institutions such as the bureaucracy, the police, the defence forces, the public education system and the judicial system were biased against the Tamils. The author describes the different kinds of Tamils who live in Sri Lanka in great detail and also their links with the Tamil diaspora. She then goes on to discuss their grievances. An important landmark in the growth of the Tamil movement is the Sinhala Only Act (1956) that enraged the Tamil speaking community. In 1958 riots broke out and in 1960-1 the Federal Party led a civil disobedience campaign for Tamil language rights and Tamil consciousness. However, by the early 1970s, the demands for a separate state for the Tamils had gathered momentum. In 1975 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was created, an organisation that ‘did not hesitate to resort to murder and terrorism in the pursuit of their goal’. The chapter has a good section on the ‘War of Attrition: from the 1983 riots to 2001’ and a final comment on ‘The spirit of Tamilness’. However, it is clear that the author has no sympathy for the LTTE and its supporters. She also castigates the organisation and its ideology for being male dominated and using women to further the aims of Tamil militancy. Elsewhere in the book she notes that women as a social category in Sri Lanka are even more disempowered than the Tamil community.
The final chapter examines welfare measures in Sri Lanka. They were first introduced by the British and included the enactment of minimum wage legislation for Indian estate labour and social legislation on child and family welfare, poverty alleviation, education, health and social security. After achieving independence the Sri Lankan state made a commitment to welfarism. However, the welfare state was dismantled after 1977 with the initiation of economic liberalisation and an export led economy. Welfare expenditure fell from 10 per cent of the GNP in the 1970s to 4 per cent in the 1980s. The chapter goes on to discuss the impact of welfare policies on various sections of the Sri Lankan society, the economic and social costs of the civil war and neo-welfarism: humanitarianism. UN agencies and INGOs and relief organisations have stepped in where the state has abandoned its responsibilities because of conflict, unfortunately creating dependencies.
Identities have torn the island apart, destroyed its chances of economic success and blighted the lives of its poorest citizens. The protracted civil war in Sri Lanka is not the first of its kind in the world and will not be the last. It underscores the potency of ethnic identities notwithstanding the controversies surrounding the LTTE. This volume reflects on Sri Lanka's history and although it does not offer any solutions encourages the adoption of a critical approach to Sri Lankan identities.
Sagarika Dutt Department of International Relations Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom [email protected] ______
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Antonio Millo Isolario (Athens, Greece: AdVenture Publications, 2006), ISBN 978-960- 87792-2-8, hardcover, lii + 300 pp, €75.00.
We have few details about the life of Antonio Millo. He was born on the island of Milos in the Cyclades in the early part of the 16th century, and spent much of his life sailing in the Mediterranean, attaining later in life the rank of “Armiraglio dal Zante,” or the official Harbor Pilot of the island. He came to Venice and studied the art of cartography, and by 1557 was producing portolan charts. His career as a cartographer continued until at least 1591; in addition to portolan charts he received commissions for the creation of sumptuous atlases, and also made isolarii, or island-books illustrated with maps. Until now Millo’s beautiful isolarii have been available only in manuscript at a few research libraries and in private collections; this book makes his work available to a much wider audience.
Itself a sumptuous and ambitious production, this book presents Millo’s work to a very wide audience indeed, for it contains not only Millo’s Italian text (transcribed by Agamemnon Tselikas), but good translations into Greek (by Tselikas) and English (by Eleni Agathou), trilingual introductory material about Millo and his isolario (by Tselikas and George Tolias), and trilingual geographical indices. The publishers have generously printed Millo’s work on superb paper and it is beautifully and strongly bound. The book is based on a manuscript in the collection of Sylvia Ioannou; the dedicatory letter is dated 1582, and this is probably Millo’s earliest surviving isolario. The manuscript includes a portolano (a list of distances between ports and instructions for entering them) following the isolario, but only the isolario is published here.
Glancing at a page of the book, one might think that it is a facsimile edition of the manuscript. However, this is not the case, and the nature of the edition bears clarification. It includes wonderfully clear reproductions of all of Millo’s maps, but the text is not in Millo’s handwriting. It has been transcribed and printed in a font which has the look of an antique script, but which is much more easily legible than Millo’s (samples of Millo’s handwriting may be seen on pp. xvi-xvii, l-li, 256-257, and 298). Transcriptions of the toponyms also appear in the margins of each map, and the Greek and English translations of the text usually appear on the page opposite the Italian text and map. Thus the purity of a facsimile edition has been surrendered in favor of utility, legibility, and accessibility.
Millo’s appealing maps, with their compass roses, depictions of the buildings of cities and towns, and indications of navigational hazards, rely on those of the isolario tradition, for example those of Bartolommeo dalli Sonetti whose isolario was published in Venice in 1485. But the texts are Millo’s own. The texts of other isolarii mention historical events and classical myths set on the islands they discuss, but Millo’s focus is on the practicalities of navigation. Here, for example, is his description of Brazza (today, Brac, an island (land area of 394 km2), off the Dalmatian coast in the Adriatic Sea, Croatia):
“Brazza is an island to which a Venetian nobleman goes as governor. And it has many villages and it is full of forests, with a good harbour called Milna on the northwest. Further north is Fava harbour which is good for galleys, and further northeast is the cape of San Pietro where small vessels can load timber. And then
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further east you find the harbour of San Zuane, and before that there is a very good harbour called Pissopia, and then the cape called St Pietro. And on the southwest is the harbour of Brazza. And said island produces considerable honey, and its perimeter is 50 miles.”
His descriptions of more important islands such as Sicily (pp. 73-78) and Crete (pp. 243- 247) are of course longer and more detailed, as is his account of his home island of Milos (pp. 145-148). Other isolario authors such as Benedetto Bordone expanded their works by including islands outside the Mediterranean, and in Millo’s isolario which is British Library Additional MS. 10,365, ff. 36r-96v, he includes descriptions (but no maps) of Cuba, Sumatra, Iceland, England, and a few other distant islands. But, in the manuscript reproduced here and in British Library Cotton MS. Julius E.II., ff. 1-60v, Venice, Biblioteca Marciana MS It. IV 2 (=5540), he confines himself to the Mediterranean.
One thing that one misses in the volume is a list of the known manuscripts of Millo’s isolario, and some discussion, however brief, of the development of the maps and text of his work over time. I have not studied this matter in detail, but there are certainly substantial refinements in Millo’s map of Meleda (Mljet, in Dalmatia) from his 1582 manuscript reproduced here and his map of the island in his 1590 manuscript which is Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, MS P/17, ff. 38r-109v. In his 1582 text, he mentions the stagno or lake on the island but does not depict it on his map, but it does appear in the Greenwich manuscript, and there are other differences between the maps as well (images of the Greenwich manuscript are available through the Library’s online catalog at http://www.nmm.ac.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/abcd/0/49). One also wishes that the bibliography on p. xxxix were a bit more ample.
The year 2003 saw the publication of a splendid facsimile edition of the isolario of Alonso de Santa Cruz (Islario y cartografía de Santa Cruz, ed. Mariano Cuesta Domingo, Madrid: Real Sociedad Geográfica, 2003); in 2005 the pioneering isolario of Chrisopher Buondelmonti was published in facsimile (Liber insularum archipelagi: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Düsseldorf Ms. G 13, ed. Irmgard Siebert and Max Plassmann, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005, reviewed in Island Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1). So these are good years for lovers of the isolario genre, and this beautiful presentation of Antonio Millo’s isolario makes them even better.
Antonio Millo Isolario may be obtained from the Moufflon Bookshop, Nicosia, Cyprus
Chet Van Duzer Los Altos Hills, CA USA [email protected] ______
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Kavenna, Joanna (2005) The Ice Museum: To Shetland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland and Svalbard in search of the Lost Land of Thule, London, Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303846-7. 294 pp.
In this bright and engaging piece of travel literature, author Kavenna masterfully documents her intellectual and actual journey to discover the ancient mythical land of Thule, which, at face value, is an escape from urban life. In ancient times, Thule referred to the most northerly edge of the ‘Old World’ near a frozen ocean, a mysterious, mist-covered place that existed only in a dream, populated by the most fantastic creatures and magic. The earliest claim to have reached Thule was made by the Greek explorer Pytheas in the 4th century B.C., possibly with his discovery of Scotland. As millennia rolled by, the location of Thule became a symbol for remoteness and fable, representing a mystical land that receded further north with each new discovery, still shrouded in mystery and metaphor in the romantic poetry and journals of Victorian explorers and travellers. Today the name Thule applies to the most northerly US air base in the world, situated in northern Greenland.
What elevates this book above the rest of the ‘island paradise’ genre is how the author leads us into our own intellectual journeys as she undertakes to find what has happened to the mythical land of Thule. Kavenna’s passion leads her to give up her job and embark upon an arduous fact-finding mission to a series of cold, stark, Northern places that all happen to be islands, where she revels in their silent beauty. She writes, “I wanted to walk through empty serenity and hear nothing but the thump of my feet on the rocks” (p.5). The geographies of the isolated regions visited, whether real or heightened through imagination, are captured in a balanced mixture of sensory description and methodical detail through the author’s unique lens and considerable expressive ability. The outcome is a fresh way for readers to view the North and themselves that is at once ancient and post- modern, and primarily accessed through its islands.
Kavenna manages to sharpen and modify our perceptions of these islands in a style that is reminiscent of other island studies classics which use the travel genre to explore an overarching idea as it influences or is impacted by each island passed by or through. David Quammen’s Song of the Dodo (1996) is arguably a travel piece which vividly portrays the threatened biogeography of islands. Thurston Clarke’s eclectic narrative in Searching for Crusoe (2002) takes the reader on a vicarious journey to a selection of famous islands, personal islands, and symbolic islands, revealing how imagination transforms realities in such small places.
By interweaving ancient myth and prose with tales of Northern travellers past and present, Kavenna creates a captivating narrative about the power of myth and its use or misuse to augment goals of a society. Her search for Thule is grounded in diligent historical research, personal observation and scientific evidence. Her eleven chapters follow threads connected to the overall theme of myth such as “nostalgia”, “silence”, “savages”, “purity”, “fire” or “ice heart” which leads to journeys and explorations in different island locations.
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In the course of travelling by boat, plane, car, train and on foot, the author’s search for Thule is enhanced through the stories, poetry and prose from ancient Greek philosophers, explorers, Victorian tourists, artists, professors, aboriginal leaders, ordinary islanders, survivors of occupation, military commanders and climate-change scientists. Aided by seven spare but elegant line-drawn maps locating the communities and ocean regions visited, the prose is exquisitely sensory for the most part, expressing colours, sounds, smells and a honed sense of time in many passages, such as “the winds blasted symphonies across the rocks and the waves drummed on the sands” (p. 55), and “The main square had a chiming clock, haunting the cold evening with a medieval resonance” (p. 199). Steaming along the coast of northern Norway, “the geometry was constantly shifting: curved mountain crags, sharp points, even plateaus, smooth mounds, rugged lumps” (p. 156). The reader accompanies the author to meet Arne Naess, “the ageing conscience of an oil-rich nation, a philosopher almost as old as the century, born the year after Amundsen arrived at the South Pole” (p. 35). The travellers and residents encountered relate to their quirky isolated worlds in intriguing ways, engaging the reader in a deeper yet contemporary understanding of the paradoxes of islands and isolated Northern communities.
Overall, an inadvertent yet extraordinary snapshot emerges of the Shetlands, the Orkneys, Lofoten, Iceland, Greenland, Saaremaa, Samiland, Svalbard and their interconnecting oceanic waterways. The author’s narrative throughout the journey portrays not only the ancient Thule myth as an outcome of overwhelming geography in the presence of human imagination, but also the evolution of raw island reality of the 21st century. As an accomplished book reviewer based in London, UK, and a contributor to the Guardian, Observer and the International Herald Tribune, Kavenna is well-placed to execute such a work. Intended for the well-educated general reader, this book provides an entertaining and thought-provoking read. Even though a bibliography and an index would have been a useful addition to the work, The Ice Museum is worthy of inclusion in a well-rounded island studies library.
E. Kathleen Stuart Island Studies Program University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. [email protected]
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